English

(Welcome EMBA McGill-HEC Montréal Class of 2013!!!)

Mission of Asociación Civil Va de Vuelta
Build capacities among micro and small informal businesses formed by unemployed people under the poverty line who wish to become sustainable.

Vision
Contribute toward a new world and economic order based on the fact that we are all one.

Va de Vuelta is a non profit organization that works mostly with indigent people who, even after almost 9 years of high growth and high employment economic scenario, cannot be employed in the slums around the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where over 14 million people under the poverty line, one million, under extreme poverty.

Va de Vuelta has worked with cooperatives formed by cartoneros or urban scavengers helping them to process material (paper, cardboard, glass, and plastics) in warehouses. The coops together with other grass roots organizations promote curbside recycling programs that might benefit them directly. Curbside recycling is virtually non existent in Argentina today. Today these coops work in bad conditions in informal warehouses and have too many management problems, and most of their workers earn a lot less than minimum conditions. Va de Vuelta also works together with Universidad de San Martin promoting workshops and several projects for inmates in San Martin, Province of Buenos Aires.

Our Solution
Provide informal small businesses with business development services, access to credit, education and technical training in order to work with them in their path toward sustainability, growth, formalization and the achievement of other social and business goals.

The Bridge
Va de Vuelta seeks to bridge a gap between small excluded businesses and medium and large companies. Research indicates that the hand of a formal, large or medium sized company can provide much of the resources and know-how these groups need.

We also intend to bridge an ideological gap. We propose a new model for the business world, one in which the well being of all (people and the environment) are put before growth and profits. And one in which people living in poverty and exclusion become part of the productive and economic system by way of new, creative, paradigm-breaking solutions that require immediate and effective action from the part of the business world, government and non- profit organizations.

The team

Ernesto “Lalo” David Paret was raised in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, his family had migrated from the interior of Argentina looking for work. Lalo was a cartonero or urban scavenger together with friends and family. He has worked since he is 8 helping his neighborhood to organize. In 2001 with the “gran crisis” he helped many fellow workers organize in cooperatives. He founded Cooperativa del Tren Blanco along with many others in José León Suárez, partido de San Martin, Provincia de Buenos Aires. He also founded the Red de Cooperativas de Cartoneros “Reciclando Valores” and one of the various organizations that help worker recovered factories, “empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores”. He has helped more than 30 worker recovered factories, and co founded

The Founders
Margarita M. Carlés. Margarita worked in the areas of marketing and communications for companies and NGOs. Her first job was writing for La Prensa (argentine newspaper). After working in the private sector she worked for the government of the Province of Buenos Aires, creating a credit and technical support program for productive initiatives integrated by low income people, mostly cooperatives and small farmers. She is also founder of Equitas Ventures, a small impact investing firm, and is coordinator of BiD Challenge, a business plan competition for social and environmental entrepreneurs in Argentina. Margarita holds a BA from Rutgers University (New Jersey) and has graduate studies in Strategic Management from Universidad de San Andres, Buenos Aires. She is a certified Life Coach

Cooperativa La Toma del Sur was formed by a group of 10 people who in the 2001 crisis took to the streets asking for food and participated actively of the political turmoil of those days. Later on they occupied an abandoned factory, which today they own. They work processing e-waste, refurbishing and reselling electronics and computers. They still live below the poverty line but have modified their life significantly. They aim at employing at least 15 people more from nearby slum.

As for the prison, we have worked for 4 years with several groups, organizing workshops and training in trades such as carpentry, electricity, another groups makes furniture and another is manages a Cultural Room, where we offer a poetry and writing workshop.

We organize custom made dialogue experiencies as half day visits including a local lunch (locro and empanadas) for groups. We have hosted MBA Students from Mc Gill University for the past 4 years from (Montreal, Canada) and a group of 25 consultants from Axialent.